And I'm Home

White dress, flowers in her hair, the rain holds off until it becomes merely a fun story for later years, you see lightning in the clouds over Tuscan mountains when everyone else is sleeping. There is food, and wine, and stories of days Before.

Later, when the stone house is quiet, the night black, you lie awake counting mosquitoes and trying to make sense of a life that will not be made sense of. Only a few hours remain until the party begins again, you treasure the moments of solitude when you may digest. And so, perhaps, it goes for life. You'll stitch the pieces together in time.

Your own.

Under the Tuscan Sun

The day revolves in sunshine. Sit on a rock and watch the Mediterranean rage, it soothes you. Practice speeches in the mirror, as your shoulders turn brown with summer. A language slowly builds on your tongue; home is thousands of miles away (literally too). This room alone must be bigger than how you live normally, she says and she isn't wrong. The closet space alone is daunting. 

I could walk for hours with this cool, soft grass underneath my bare feet. My heart beats so loudly in my chest on this hard bed. I don't know yet what it means. 

Perhaps it's nothing at all. 

Leaning

Another night of upturned lag, you nap in the short space where it's dark outside then twiddle your thumbs until it's time to go. Walk through a quiet capital in the middle of the night but it's already dawn, the boats lie still in the water but how light it is. Sit on a sleeping bus as the sun rises over a town that was always beautiful in summer, always beautiful in the hours when you didn't need share it. The flight is late but you arrive to familiar faces behind the ropes, what treasure. Rearrange your languages but it all comes up French, there's an old castle at the edge of town where you live now, at night the whole place creaks and you know something is haunted. You're certain the ghosts will be friendly.

A wind blows through the magnolias, sweeps little clouds across the crescent moon. You haven't slept in days. Will the Tuscan night to whispers secrets into your dreams. Pray this will still be real, tomorrow.

Elsewhere

Arrive in the early morning, air is cool but the first commuters are already on their way; you squeeze your big bag and unseasonable tan into their unwelcoming gazes. There's not enough warm clothes in that suitcase. Tumble around in jet lag and get confused by midnight sun, repack your bags into impossibly small proportions and set the alarm. Three hours if you fall asleep now, but you will not. I ran along the water this morning but nothing made sense. The flowers are beautiful, the still air, the city you once knew.


It no longer knows you.

You're not sure what to tell it.

Rainbow Bright

Check off the to-do list, one last run along the river and throw out the milk before it goes bad in your absence. I drag perpetually heavy bags into the underground and squeeze into a crowded subway car, my cheek leaning awkwardly against the glittery arm of a drag queen. We get off the train at the same spot in the west village, the rainbow flags all emerging above ground and me schlepping the bags to another train northward. I get in late and run through the tunnels, arrive sweating on a train that races into the countryside, all moody clouds and waving reeds. I stare at the skyline and try not to cry. It's a day for joy and celebration, for love and confetti, for the great freedom of a new horizon but I feel none of that.

Beautiful days only remind me I miss you. The forecast says rain everywhere I'm going now. I am grateful for the reprieve.

If only I had packed a jacket.

Brooklyn Inn

A flight is canceled, they come back in tatters but at least you get a few more hours in their company. It's a strange sort of existence. You try to teach his young eyes about Washington Square Park squirrels and the magic underneath his feet; he practices high fives with unknown hands. It is the same thing. Later, along that polished dark wood, try to read the palms of a stranger, see how their old eyes fit into yours. You're not sure you're wearing the right glasses.

The summer evening is perfect, I took too many pills today I know but everything is falling apart at the seams and I don't have time just now. I check in online. Choose a window seat near the very back. If you hold on for just a little longer none of this will mean anything. Set the alarms. Take me home or take me anywhere.

At the Same Time, I Don't

It's fine, it's fine, a belly full of snakes, it's fine, don't forget [how] to breathe. Just a few months ago you lived on a tour bus and didn't know fear. It's easy to forget your highs when you keep getting shoved into the lows. Fill the hours with mindless input until a friendly face appears at your side and calms your fevered forehead for a while. You still go to bed with ghouls, the cool air of the machine at your pillow does nothing to dissuade them. I keep waking at dawn, unable to sleep. If I were across the sea now the sun would never set and we'd sing that inevitable melancholy as we do.

The chaos of the room leaves way for a gentle exodus. Erase your scent from this space. Let someone else tear through it for a bit. You can only be cut so many times before your blood gives up the will to coagulate. My suitcase fills up. My hair is being pulled by the stars again. 

Overs, Pt II

New seasons, new voices in your phone, scrub out the old by potting a new plant on top of it, and hope you won't notice the crooked seam at the edge. Build a smile and hope it holds up to scrutiny.  We put our air conditioning behemoths in the window last night and prayed they'd levitate. It's the same thing every year.

She doesn't ask about you. I don't know if they've already forgotten, perhaps they never learned to remember. I'm not sure it matters -- I remember enough for a hundred seasons. It sits in my gut and whittles my bones. A year ago we slow danced in the street but even the streets have moved on. They look so different even when they carry the same names and in Greenpoint they're building a high rise.  We sat in the sandy bar and let the bartender pour us tiki drink overspill until it cooled down outside.

The plants in my window are thriving. They're looking for something to hold on to.

I'm already packing my bags.

Kashmir

Helter swelter, your skin dissolves against the pavement and everything swims. Monday morning slaps you upside the head as the To Do list wraps its innumerable arms around you. Your obligations suffocate you but your bank account dwindles. Somehow the balance seems frail.

In a second, the sky turns black. Thunder smacks across the borough and a monsoon drenches the tourists on Second Avenue. Sit in the window and watch the mayhem. Feel the temperature slowly descend. Bring out a large suitcase from the top of the closet. All things go, all things go.

So often you are too wrapped up in self-loathing to remember gratitude. We are alive. It is summer. The ticket lies waiting and the Word remains at our side. Magic runs rampant. Bring out your nets. Let's catch some.

Black

Light the candles, sing the song, another year goes by and the frosting holds up despite the humidity. Swipe right to prove to yourself you have some humanity left, although most of it sifts through your fingers like sand. Put this away till morning. No good comes of speaking into the void on a Friday night with a half drunk bottle of wine on the floor. The sunburn itches on my thigh.

This'll all look different in the morning.

Paint It

The temperature drops 30 degrees overnight, you wake with a chill and smile. A cool breeze lifted me along the east river promenade for miles and miles and I laughed the whole way.

Someone asked me the other day how long I've lived here and I realized the real answer was long enough. Long enough to walk its streets with my back straight, long enough to look people in the eye, long enough to belong. I spent so many years tumbling around anytime the wind caught me, lifted and landing with no control of my wanderings. Maybe I'm not done walking the earth yet, but my feet no longer leave the ground at every gust. For all the things I do not have, I do have this, and it is worth everything.

95.7

The heat wave lingers. It rolled its fat, slow front like a tongue across the city and stayed there, pushing beads of sweat from every inch of your skin. The AC in your closet rests as you test your endurance. Everything slows, every movement, the thick blood in your veins, everything except the fingers that run across your keyboard, mad with visions they're terrified to forget before committing them to paper. A sunburn itches at the small of my back, but it's no metaphor.

I'm doing the things I said I would do.

It keeps feeling like home.

West

The morning begins with a jolt, soon you're in an uptown waiting room calming a terrified face and hoping for good news. The sun is warm again and Queensborough Bridge is teeming with excitement: summer Friday. Pack your bag and move westward, back into that nook you know with your eyes closed, how nothing feels as much like home as this. One day this place will belong to someone else. Perhaps it will be yours, perpetually.

The weekend steams. People evaporate out of their apartments, the tiny morsels of green space filling up in an instant. I ran along familiar piers, to familiar views, but everything felt a hundred miles away underneath my pounding steps. A slow downward spiral circles your spine but you decide to cut it off before it speaks.

I haven't time for a slow descent into madness just now. It is summer.

I know I'll get to it eventually.

Roll

Take a late morning train, middle of the week and none of the well to-dos are on their way yet, you have the row to yourself. Watch Long Island rush past your window in increasingly thick greenery, a gentle reminder how rarely you the the wild anymore. Dark brown wooden shingles rule, the sun comes out and tans increase the further east you go. Smell the salt water, see the dunes rise like waves cresting on either side. They pick you up all smiles and you think the air is a little lighter out here. Stare at a blue horizon with nothing in it until Europe.

The night is cold, but completely quiet. A full moon rises over the water. Your bed is full of pillows and whispers to you of a hundred years' sleep in its folds. You let the night reassemble your pieces. Let the rolling sand make you whole.

Score

Another day of rain, it lies like a heavy fog at the top of 1st avenue and below 14th street drizzles in every direction. I rife through drawers and bathroom cupboards for escape pods, but they offer little outside of a coating of cotton around my nerve cells. Pack a bag for summer escape but bring your warm clothes, wonder what it is you're trying to prove. He tells you about undergraduate poets and your laugh gets stuck in your throat; perhaps you haven't graduated, yourself.

The days race ahead without reprieve. You wonder if you'll make it to the end.

Diamonds and Rust

Late night texts, some dull knives that pretend caresses, other fluttering fingertips that pretend comfortable familiarity. You stare out the window and try to comprehend what you might want to send in return, but it's all ants in your belly again and you wish the liquor bottle on your windowsill wasn't quite so empty. Today, 8 years ago, I moved back to New York, my second time around and this time it would be for real, it would be the one true love to last forever. Two years later I landed on old, familiar shores with my heart broken in my hand, the remains of my possessions in a torn shopping bag, and I thought that I would never be happy again.

The day passed in useless inertia, in circles of self-abuse and uselessness, but perhaps this is the price I pay for the ticket. Perhaps this is the blood sacrifice to get to that space where the story speaks in my stead.
If it will get me there, I bleed willingly. If it will return to me, whisper to me its secrets, I will bleed myself dry. I will tear at my insides until they are all clawed out, I will scream at the walls until the paint peels off.
Don't you see?
I will kill myself just to live.

Scribble

Summer came again today, another attempt at making it stick. I ran through hordes of people; where do they all come from when it thaws? I ran and ran until I fell over myself. The conversations were the same but you weren't in them. At least the miles beat the questions out of them.

New faces appear on the screen, all smiles and promise. You take it all with mountains of salt, ward off dehydration. Set your words aside. It'll all catch up with you eventually.